Two-Dimensional Melting of Colloidal Hard Spheres

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Apr 14;118(15):158001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.158001. Epub 2017 Apr 10.

Abstract

We study the melting of quasi-two-dimensional colloidal hard spheres by considering a tilted monolayer of particles in sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium. In particular, we measure the equation of state from the density profiles and use time-dependent and height-resolved correlation functions to identify the liquid, hexatic, and crystal phases. We find that the liquid-hexatic transition is first order and that the hexatic-crystal transition is continuous. Furthermore, we directly measure the width of the liquid-hexatic coexistence gap from the fluctuations of the corresponding interface, and thereby experimentally establish the full phase behavior of hard disks.